A Night to Remember | Exodus 12:29-42

Brian has been a Christian for nearly 20 years, but he has struggled with pornography for most of that time. He’ll go weeks—sometimes months—without falling into temptation, but eventually he stumbles. Usually it’s when the stresses of work build up or the conflict in his marriage intensifies. It’s been this way for so long that he’s convinced it will never change.

Kate has been a Christian since she was a little child, but anxiety and depression have had a grip on her for several years. At her worst moments, the weight of her anxious thoughts are paralyzing. Almost anything can set it off—her children’s health, her husband’s job, her family dysfunction. She’s tried reciting Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything,” but that usually makes her feel worse—like there’s something wrong with her since she can’t stop feeling anxious. It’s been this way for so long that she’s hopeless.

Tom has a short fuse. Friends and coworkers would never know, but his wife and children bear the brunt of his angry outbursts. He is ashamed and hopeless. His wife is weary, and also hopeless.

Are there besetting sins or unabating circumstances that make you feel hopeless? In my experience as a pastor, no matter the issue a person is dealing with—anxiety, eating disorders, addictions, marriage problems, you name it—the problem is always exacerbated by despair: “It’s never going to change. I’m never going to change.” Hopelessness—or despair—is the soul-sucking feeling you get when you are convinced it will always be this way—the awful way it is right now.

We’ve been in the book of Exodus for a while, but this morning we come to the Exodus. And if you’ve ever felt hopeless, or if you know someone in despair, you need to know the story of the Exodus. That’s because the Exodus is the paradigm for God’s redemption, deliverance, and salvation. It’s a true story that really happened in history to particular people. But it reveals to all people in all places and times that the LORD is mighty to save. And that’s what you need to be convinced of when you lose hope.

Exodus 12:29–42 (ESV)

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!” 

The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.” So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians. 

And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves. 

The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It was a night of watching by the Lord, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.

Take Heart

Through the events of the Exodus, recorded here for your edification, God reveals himself to the world as the God who is mighty to save. He is the God of deliverance and rescue. He is the God of inexhaustible resources and infinite reservoirs of grace. He is the God of promises made and promises kept. He is the God of hope.

The message of Exodus 12:29–42 is this: helpless people in hopeless circumstances can take heart because God is mighty to save.  Nothing is hopeless for the God of the Exodus. No one is hopeless for the God of the Exodus. 

That’s the point of this text. It is meant to inform—to shape and define your view of God. It is meant to give you hope.

Are you enslaved to sin? Are you drowning in unbearable circumstances? Are you at a dead end relationally, vocationally, emotionally? Are you full of regret about past decisions and the consequences of your actions? Do you see no way forward and no way out—only darkness and no light at the end? God revealed himself in the Exodus so that you would have hope in him today. 

Specifically, God reveals three aspects of his saving work here. You can take heart because God deals with sin, God frees his people, and God keeps his Word.

Take heart because God deals with sin.

The first thing we see in the Exodus is that deliverance always begins with judgment of sin. When God delivers, God first deals justly with sin. Verse 29 begins, “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.”

The horror of the first two verses (vv. 29–30) is impossible to adequately portray or imagine. The themes of death and darkness are conspicuous. The tenth plague—the death of the firstborn son—took place in the black of night. “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn” (v. 29). “And Pharaoh rose up in the night” (v. 30). “Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night” (v. 31).

The text also stresses how ubiquitous death was that night. Death was everywhere; no one escaped, from the palace to the prison. As verse 29 says, “At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon.” Verse 30 repeats the point: “And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house [the word can mean household] where someone was not dead.” Imagine the weeping and wailing, the distress, the sobbing and guttural moaning.

What an awful night! The text doesn’t give us details about how the firstborn died. But it does tell us that Pharaoh (and all the Egyptians) rose up in the night, he and all the Egyptians. And it says in v. 31 that he summoned Moses and Aaron by night. So there was a commotion in the middle of the night. It’s not like they all went to bed and woke to find that their firstborn had died peacefully in his sleep. Whatever happened that night, everyone was awake for it.

And verse 29 is clear that this was God’s doing: “The LORD struck down all the firstborn.” On the night that God would deliver his people from 400 years of bondage, from agonizing oppression under a ruthless tyrant, he began with an act of judgment.

That’s what the Tenth Plague was. Death is the penalty for sin. In the Garden of Eden, God warned Adam what would happen if he disobeyed God: “For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16–17). Paul writes in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.” In Romans 5:12, Paul explains that death is in the world because of sin, and all people die because all people sin.

In fact, there was death in every household that night because there was sin in every household. Either an unblemished lamb was slaughtered and the blood was spread on the doorposts of the house, or the Lord struck down the firstborn in that home. Either way, death came to every household that night.

On the night of the Exodus, the first thing God did was deal justly with sin. When God delivers, he always deals with sin. Sin is the problem, so sin must be dealt with or else there is no deliverance.

And here’s why that’s good news for you. Sin is always your greatest problem. When you sin, you feel guilt. When others sin against you, you feel bitterness. And even when we endure afflictions that aren’t caused by sin, we make things worse when we respond sinfully to those unpleasant circumstances.

If there is to be any deliverance in your life, God must deal with sin. That means, on one hand, that those who have wronged you will answer to God. But it also means that God has made a way to condemn your sin without destroying you. He struck down his own firstborn Son for the guilt of your sin so that he could deliver you and maintain his justice. 

The death of the firstborn sons of the wicked Egyptians we can comprehend. But who could have ever imagined that God would save the world by striking down his only begotten Son, the Firstborn of all creation? God has already condemned and judged all your sin in his firstborn Son in order to deliver you from bondage to sin.

So take heart! There’s hope because sin is your greatest problem, but God has paid for your sin through the death of his firstborn Son.

Take heart because God frees his people.

Immediately after striking down the firstborn of Egypt and passing over the households of Israel, God set his people free from their captivity. Verse 36 describes the incredible events of that night as the work of God when it says, “The LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.”

Normally, if you’re trying to escape, you basically have two options: stealth or strength. You either sneak out or fight your way out. Israel did neither.

They were set free—commanded to leave by Pharaoh and begged to leave by the Egyptians. “Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, ‘Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!’” (Exodus 12:31–32). The rest of the Egyptians also “were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste” (v. 33).

“In haste.” By repetition the text emphasizes the immediacy of the exodus. “They were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait” (v. 39). They left in such a hurry that their bread had no time to rise (vv. 34, 39). They had no time to pack or prepare provisions for their journey (v. 39).

The Exodus was a sudden and complete reversal. Israel’s departure from Egypt glorifies God and demonstrates his ability to deliver. How else do you account for the fact that they were not merely permitted to leave by their captors, but begged to leave. Not only that, but the Egyptians even sent them away with riches:

“The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.” (Exodus 12:35–36).

They didn’t slink out of Egypt like fugitives or runaway slaves. They marched out with the spoils of war like a victorious army. Verse 41 calls Israel “the hosts of the LORD”—that is, the armies of the Lord. 

And what had they done to defeat the mighty nation of Egypt? Nothing! But their God fought for them. They were the undeserving recipients of the kindness and the mercy and the favor and the steadfast love of the LORD.

And if you are trusting in Jesus Christ, then you too are the object of God’s favor. And that is why there is always hope for you.

Your God loves cliffhangers and eucatastrophes. Catastrophe literally means “a sudden turn,” but it refers to sudden destruction or suffering. Eu-catastrophe is a word JRR Tolkein coined by adding the prefix “eu,” meaning good, to the word catastrophe: a sudden turn for good. When the possibility of devastating sorrow and loss is real, sudden deliverance brings overwhelming joy.

In the Hebrew text, v. 29 begins with a phrase that is left out of many English translations for some reason. The King James begins, “And it came to pass ….” The NASB renders it, “Now it came about …” Victor Hamilton, in his commentary, translates it like this: “It happened. At midnight the LORD struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt.”

It happened.

After four hundred years, it happened. After Pharaoh endured nine plagues and stubbornly refused to let them go, suddenly it happened. It happened urgently and with great haste. It happened in a single night. God delivered his people from bondage in Egypt.

When you are tempted to look at chronic and persistent problems in your life and think hopeless thoughts—“It will never change; it will always be this way”—remember that your God is the God of the Exodus. We often do the math like this: it’s been so bad for so long, and keeps getting worse and worse, so healing and change would take at least as long … or longer. But that fails to account for the power of God’s redeeming grace.

In The Princess Bride, Miracle Max says, “With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change.” But God raises the dead—he causes those who were all dead to instantly come alive! No matter how impossible and overwhelming your sin or your circumstances are, change is possible because God sets his people free.

And lest you think, “that may be true for others, but that’s not true for me,” don’t miss this detail in v. 38 that’s so easy to overlook: “A mixed multitude also went up with them.” A mixed multitude! That means not just Israelites, but foreigners, probably even Egyptians. There was “a mixed multitude” who heard God’s warnings and believed. They responded in faith to God’s word. They must have spread blood over their doorposts, or found shelter in the homes of their Hebrew neighbors.

This is a profound clue that God’s favor has never been based on anything in us that earns his attention or approval. On the night of the Exodus and all throughout history, God made a distinction between those who belong to him and those who don’t, between objects of his favor and objects of his wrath. However, that distinction was not ethnicity or social status or anything else.

So take heart! Everyone who trusts in Jesus will be saved. That is for you.

Take heart because God keeps his Word.

Verse 42 concludes, “It was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the LORD by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.”

A night of watching. The root of the word watching means “to guard, to keep, to observe.” On the night of the Exodus, God kept watch all night to guard and protect his people. He was actively watching over his people and personally accomplishing their deliverance.

God’s personal vigilance over his people is a source of great hope and comfort. This is the theme of Psalm 121: “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps [same root as “watching” in Exodus 12]  you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:2–4). God is vigilant, attentive, watchful. He never sleeps on the job.

Psalm 121 goes on: “The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. … The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 121:2–5, 7–8). God is wide awake and watching over you for your good.

And what that means is that God is always acting to personally fulfill his Word. This narrative is packed with references and allusions to earlier promises and warnings from God. And that’s on purpose. We’re supposed to get to this point and realize that everything that happened on the night of the Exodus happened in fulfillment of God’s word.

The Tenth Plague—the death of the firstborn—was foretold back in 11:1–10. Actually, before Moses had even returned to Egypt, God told him, “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son’” (Exodus 4:22–23). The death of every firstborn, from Pharaoh’s son to the firstborn of the slave girl was foretold (11:5). God foretold that there would be a great cry (11:6). God promised that the Egyptians would bow before Moses and beg them to leave (11:8). All of this came true.

God told Moses that when Pharaoh finally relented, he would not just let Israel go, but he would drive them out: “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land’” (Exodus 6:1; cf. 11:1).

God promised that the Hebrews would plunder the Egyptians. He first promised this to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:21–22). But the first mention of it was all the way back in Genesis 15, when God made promises to Abraham about his descendants and told him, “I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (Genesis 15:14).

God even told Abraham his descendents would be enslaved for 400 years (Gen. 15:13).

The point is this: God’s promises are not merely predictions or forecasts about the future. God’s promises are personal guarantees of all that he will personally do. God himself actively fulfills his promises. He brings them to pass. He accomplishes his word. 

In Jeremiah 1, God gave the prophet Jeremiah a vision: “And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see an almond branch.’ [And almond sounds like the Hebrew word for watching.] Then the LORD said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it’” (Jeremiah 1:11–12). God watches over his word to perform it. 

And that means that the Word of God describes and guarantees the work of God. Do you want to see God act in your life? Listen to his Word and trust him. And take heart! He is keeping watch over you to fulfill his promises to you.

Conclusion

So is there hope for people like Bryan and Kate, even though they have been hopeless for years? Is there hope for you?

The God of the Exodus has not changed. Helpless people in hopeless circumstances can take heart because God is mighty to save. Through his firstborn Son, Jesus Christ, he atones for all your sin, breaks the power of sin and raises you to new life, and personally acts to fulfill his every promise for your good.

That is your hope in Christ Jesus.